Being a grandparent is whole new phase in your life.
Everything people say about grandparenthood is true - it is pleasure without responsibility. It is unquestioned love.
One becomes a grandfather and one sees the world a little differently. Certainly the world becomes a more vulnerable place when one has a grandchild, or now I have two. And I think that possibly there's some tenderness that came out of just time and age and being a parent and grandparent.
I'm a grandfather now.
Nevertheless, if you ask me, most people have children just as their own enthusiasm about life begins to wane. A child allows us to revisit the excitement we once felt about, well... everything. A generation later, our grandkids bump up our enthusiasm yet again. Reproducing is a kind of booster shot to keep us loving life.
In mid-career, I was at one and the same time the rabbi of a major congregation, writing books, and teaching at Columbia. I didn't spend enough time with my children. Now, when I get an all-important call, I sometimes say that I'm having lunch with my granddaughter. And I do not apologize
Nothing beats that sloppy kiss of a six-month-old grandchild.
Grandparents are given a second chance to enjoy parenthood with fewer of its tribulations and anxieties.
My granddaughter's birth has made me want to create things she will love.
Few things are more satisfying than seeing your children have teenagers of their own.
I don't think of myself as old. Obviously I am - I have a free bus pass, I'm going to be a grandad in two months time, and my hip is giving me jip, so it's all telling me something I don't really want to hear.
I've been given this blessing, which is my granddaughter. You're no longer just you. You suddenly fit into the chest of drawers of life.
I'm still raising kids myself, so I don't feel like a grandpa.
When my twin grandchildren, Linda and Lyeke, were born two years ago, it changed me. I felt it was the essence of what life is about, and I cried all day. When my son Pierre, their father, was born I didn't cry like that.
I never think I'm old enough to play someone's dad, even though I have a daughter of my own and a grandson.
Grandparenthood is a unique moment in anyone's life, as countless kind people have told me in recent months, so I am enormously proud and happy to be a grandfather for the first time and we are eagerly looking forward to seeing the baby in the near future.
I'm the happiest grandfather in the world, I promise you.
My last son is leaving to go to college; my grandchildren are being born. My mother is living with me.
I think it's good that [my granddaughter] here because I lost my parents and now it's great that there's a new generation. And she's taught me new things that I've forgotten. Like, when you're on holiday and see what it's like to see a shell or go into the water for the first time.
Just look at my face. Its an extraordinary experience. All of my friends who are grandparents have been saying, just wait, a bit cynically, but its just extraordinary. You feel like a child again yourself. Just walking on air.
I actually have grandkids. I'm at that age. And with all the things that go on in our country, I sometimes wonder what sort of world they're going to inherit?
Here I am in the garden laughing an old woman with heavy breasts and a nicely mapped face how did this happen well that's who I wanted to be at last a woman in the old style sitting stout thighs apart under a big skirt grandchild sliding on off my lap a pleasant summer perspiration that's my old man across the yard he's talking to the meter reader he's telling him the world's sad story how electricity is oil or uranium and so forth I tell my grandson run over to your grandpa ask him to sit beside me for a minute I am suddenly exhausted by my desire to kiss his sweet explaining lips.
I want to be able to experience everything. I want to experience being a husband, experience being a father, experience, maybe, hopefully, someday being a grandfather, and all those things. I want that experience. When I die, I want to be exhausted.
I can die peacefully now as both my babies have their own babies.
